Bauer takes plea deal

Matt O'ConnorTribune staff reporter

Dean Bauer pleaded guilty Wednesday to obstructing a federal investigation into his conduct as the chief corruption fighter in the Illinois secretary of state's office, closing one of the most sensational chapters in Operation Safe Road.

But the investigation of the secretary of state's office under the tenure of now-Gov. George Ryan is far from over, authorities said. Sources close to the probe say it is continuing on several fronts, including a look at numerous overpriced leases at secretary of state licensing facilities and administrative offices doled out to friends and political allies of Ryan.

By pleading guilty to a single felony count of obstructing justice, Bauer admitted he instructed one of his former secretaries in the inspector general's office to destroy two sensitive documents subpoenaed by federal investigators. The woman was cooperating with authorities and secretly tape-recorded the telephone conversation in October 1999 after Bauer had left office as inspector general.

Under the agreement that was worked out during often-intense negotiations in the last three weeks, Bauer will face a 6-month prison term followed by 9 months of home confinement. The deal still needs a judge's approval.

Bauer had been scheduled to go to trial next week on charges of racketeering, mail fraud, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.

U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle Sr. set sentencing for April 18.As part of the plea deal, Bauer acknowledged prosecutors had the evidence to prove him guilty of scuttling several investigations of wrongdoing by employees to protect Ryan while he headed the secretary of state's office.

Outside of court, Bauer's lawyers, Edward Genson and Marc Martin, said that according to the plea agreement, Bauer was admitting that prosecutors could win a conviction at trial. But they insisted their client didn't impede any investigations during his seven years as inspector general. "We admit to the obstruction [count], we don't admit to anything else in there," Genson said later.

Bauer didn't agree to cooperate with the continuing probe of wrongdoing during Ryan's tenure as secretary of state, but U.S. Atty. Scott Lassar said that was never an issue in the negotiations because Bauer's lawyers all along insisted he would never cooperate.

Besides, prosecutors could still force Bauer's testimony before a grand jury by giving him immunity from further prosecution.

Bauer faced a prison sentence of at least 3 to 4 years if he had gone to trial and been convicted, but Lassar called the 6-month prison term agreed to under the plea deal "appropriate" given Bauer's age and health.

Bauer, 72, has been battling cancer, which is currently in remission. He also has thyroid problems and high blood pressure.

With his guilty plea, Bauer becomes the 35th defendant and highest-ranking former official in the secretary of state's office to be convicted in Operation Safe Road. Eighteen of those convicted had worked in the secretary of state's office.

Lassar said he was confident of victory if Bauer had gone to trial, but he was concerned that the government's novel legal theory in the case could be later thrown out by the district or appellate court.The mail-fraud charges plowed new ground, essentially accusing Bauer of criminal conduct in matters in which he had discretion on whether to pursue investigations of employee wrongdoing.

Prosecutors approached Bauer's lawyers about a plea deal in the last week of December.

During the next several weeks, Genson and Jeffrey Steinback, a former partner, pored over the details with Assistant U.S. Atty. Dean Polales, who is in charge of the office's special prosecutions section.

The defense insisted on obtaining reduced prison time for Bauer, fearing a lengthy incarceration would be a death sentence for him.

On Wednesday, the two sides were rewriting some of the details of the plea agreement.

Lassar said he didn't know for sure it was a done deal until Bauer pleaded guilty Wednesday afternoon in Judge Norgle's courtroom.

In pleading guilty to the one obstruction of justice count, Bauer admitted he suggested that a former secretary of his dispose of two incriminating documents, including one involving Bauer's thwarting of an investigation into a 1994 crash in Wisconsin that killed six children of a Chicago family.

That memo, written about a week after the crash, revealed that Bauer suspected that Ricardo Guzman, a truck driver who caused the fatal accident, had obtained his commercial driver's license illegally at the licensing facility in McCook.Yet he ordered an investigator not to pursue the case.

The second document concerned Bauer's spiriting away key evidence from a raid at the Libertyville licensing facility in 1993 that linked allegations of bribery and political fundraising for Ryan.

In a ruse by federal investigators in October 1999, Bauer's former secretary, who was secretly cooperating with authorities, called Bauer seeking advice about the two documents.

Instead, Bauer tried to "corruptly persuade" the secretary to "destroy or otherwise conceal the documents," Bauer admitted in the plea agreement.

As part of the plea, Bauer also acknowledged that prosecutors could prove at trial that he also squelched several other investigations: the 1994 probe into an alleged theft by Russell Nisivaco, a politically connected manager of a driver's licensing facility in Naperville; the 1994 investigation of Charles Juarez, a secretary of state employee in Joliet who received his job directly through Ryan's help; the 1997 probe of James Myles who was caught at the McCook licensing facility buying a $100 Ryan political fundraising ticket with a bribe in return for being illegally passed on truck-driving tests; and the Guzman and Libertyville investigations.

Bauer's admissions troubled Joseph A. Power Jr., the attorney whose lawsuit in the Guzman crash first brought to light the corruption in the secretary of state's office months before the gubernatorial election in 1998.

"The thing that is most disturbing to me, as a human being, is that a person was paid by the state of Illinois to rid that office of corruption and was instead covering up and fostering it so that his friend and mentor could be elected governor," Power said.

Tribune staff writers Ray Long and Cam Simpson contributed to this report.